I told you it was flipping dangerous!
By Eddie ‘the Eagle’ Edwards As a string of celebrities come a cropper on TV’s ski-jump reality show, the Briton who became an Olympic laughing stock says ...
Perhaps finally you’ll all believe me — ski-jumping is a great deal harder than it looks!
as one contestant after another has found out the hard way on Channel Four’s reality gameshow The Jump, the consequences of the slightest error can be catastrophic.
My thoughts are with the Olympic gymnast Beth Tweddle, who had an operation on her neck yesterday after suffering a serious spinal injury during training for The Jump on saturday.
she was airlifted from Kuhtai in austria, where the show is being filmed using a new jump three times the height of a double decker bus, to hospital in Innsbruck.
Thankfully, it appears Beth’s chances of a full recovery are good.
But her accident was a frightening reminder that ski-jumping is the most unforgiving sport in the world. For all my ‘ eddie the eagle’ goofing around before the camera while in training for the Calgary Olympics in 1988, I was never less than 100 per cent serious on every single jump.
Beth’s injury is not a one-off. The show’s producers, who have a team of medics on standby, must also have the insurers on speed-dial by now.
seven other celebrities on the show this year have been injured, including swimmer rebecca adlington (dislocated shoulder), holby City’s Tina hobley (arm fractured in two places) and — most recently — Olympic sprinter Linford Christie (hamstring).
Yesterday, Channel 4, which airs the show, launched an urgent safety review of what some are describing as ‘the most dangerous show on television’.
On the previous two series, injured contestants included Olympian oarsman sir steve redgrave and the former england cricketer Darren Gough.
No one wants to see that. It’s bad for the sport, and a nightmare for the injured skiers. I should know — I’ve suffered around 30 injuries, some of them life-changing, from 60,000 jumps I’ve performed.
I’ve fractured my skull twice, damaged a kidney, snapped a cruciate ligament in my knee, and broken all manner of bones, including my jaw. and I count myself very lucky it hasn’t been worse!
as I hear of each celebrity injury, part of me wants to leap up and down, shouting: ‘I told you so! This is an extreme sport, and nothing less than extreme dedication will suffice!’
But part of me also acknowledges that I used to look as if I was clowning around.
I couldn’t make my jumps look as effort-lessly graceful as the best international competitors, so to win the sponsorship that took me to a succession of Winter Olympics and helped me break the British ski-jump record (with a leap of 71 metres), I made it look fun.
There’s a price to pay for larking about: you don’t get taken seriously. But I was as dedicated to my sport as anyone. I was an expert skier, who set his sights on going to the 1988 Olympics in Canada to represent Britain, and went from novice ramps to the 120-metre jump in five months. That’s possible only with utter focus.
But the press loved the idea of an underdog, especially a clumsy one in Coke-bottle glasses. First of all, they said I was so short-sighted that I couldn’t see the end of the ramp, and nicknamed me Mr Magoo, after the myopic cartoon character.
Then they announced I was afraid of heights, because I’d admitted those few moments at the top of the run were sometimes terrifying.
In the right circumstances, terror is good. It makes you focus. But a ski-jumper who soars like a brick and is scared of heights . . . there’s comedy value in that, and that means headlines — Crazy eddie, Unsteady eddie, The abominable snowman, Inspector Clouseau on skis — which generate sponsors.
and since no amount of dedica-tion will pay for years of training, I needed money, and played up to it.
The Italian press — furious I was getting all the attention when their alpine heroes were being ignored — labelled me the ‘ski-dropper’.
There was harsher criticism, too, which was wounding. Olympics purists said they were appalled that a ‘clown’ was making a mockery of the sport, and rivals were jealous of the attention I was getting.
after I came last in the 70-metre and 90-metre events at the Calgary Games, the Olympics committee responded with the ‘ eddie the eagle rule’, stipulating that in future, athletes must have finished in the top 30 per cent of their field in an international competition, or be in the top 50 to qualify for the Games.
Ironically, it was the president of the Calgary organising committee, Frank King, who gave me the nickname when he joked that I had ‘soared like an eagle’.
It all made a great story — so good that a film of my life is being released later this month, starring Taron egerton. It’s very weird to see an actor portraying me, but Taron has captured me perfectly.
hugh Jackman, the australian star, plays my coach, and the hollywood great Christopher Walken co-stars, alongside Britain’s Tim Mc In nery and Keith allen. What an astonishing cast. This is a feelgood movie, but as the celebrities wincing over their bruises will know, nothing feels good about a ski-jumping accident.
There’s a moment in mid-air when you sense that something has gone wrong, and you fight to correct it.
some say their life flashes before their eyes, but with me it’s every bit of advice my coaches ever gave me, as my brain searches for the right reaction that is going to save my life.
If I can, I’ll land on my feet. If that’s not possible, I try to spread the impact over as much of my body as possible.
On a big jump, the classic error is to break the Golden rule of ski-Jumping: ‘Don’t let your knees bend’. Do this and the tips of your skis droop. Before you know it, you’re somersaulting forwards. The worst outcome is to hit the ground head-first.
Landing on your face is no better. The least-bad result is to hit the snow on your back, and hope for just a few broken ribs.
But it isn’t like landing in a snow-drift. When dozens of jumpers are landing on the slopes, that snow is compacted as hard as concrete. It is one of the most unforgiving surfaces imaginable.
The competitors on The Jump will be landing on softer snow, to reduce the dangers.
That brings its own dangers, though. If skis are not waxed properly, they will clog up on loose snow. and even after a ten-metre jump, the sort of gentler distance the celebrities are aiming for, that can be disastrous.
ANOTher big problem is the difference between jump skis and alpine skis, which have sharp sides that make them easier to control.
The competitors might think they know how to ski, but those edges can make a big difference. skiers try to turn, and discover they can’t.
That might explain why poor Beth Tweddle, who won a bronze at the 2012 Olympics, apparently landed her jump successfully but couldn’t stop herself from crashing into a safety barrier.
One of the biggest problems is the tendency for competitive people to over- estimate their abilities. No one, least of all a celebrity, likes to admit that they are ‘not very good’ at anything.
some of them, without even being aware they are bending the truth, will have told the producers they are ‘experts’. But real expertise comes with thousands of hours of practice.
I can tell a novice just by the way he carries his skis, but I can also spot an over- confident celeb, by the way he or she stands around talking instead of relentlessly practising.
I worked on the first two series of this show, and I know time is tight. There might be only a two-hour window to practise on a ramp.
Those competitors should be up and down the steps relentlessly — jump and go back, jump and go back. Instead, too many will have a couple of goes before going off for a coffee and forgetting to return because they’re feeling tired.
For that reason, I don’t think this spate of injuries is solely the fault of the producers.
Many on social media are demanding the contest be cancelled, but I think the celebrities must bear the brunt of the blame. They signed up for this; they’re being paid for this. If they are hurting, it can often be self-inflicted.
I can’t pass judgment, of course. ski-jumping was my life. These days I am a professional builder and plasterer, as well as a motiva-tional and after- dinner speaker . . . but in my heart I’m always going to be a ski-jumper.
My best jumps brought a sensa-tion beyond description. Words like ‘exhilaration’ and ‘incredible’ don’t do it justice. They made me feel as if I was flying — truly an eagle.
If this show gives others a taste of that, I’m not going to blame anyone for facing the dangers.
perhaps it will inspire another British youngster to tackle the sport, too, and represent our nation at the ultimate winter sport. If so, I’ll be cheering them all the way.